We’re being tasked to find Tara Yu (programmer archaeologist), sentinel searching for missing military hardware lost near earth in the battle of L4. Hardware fragments from a TITAN (early version) known as Myrmidon. She’s been missing for over a month now. Last we knew, she was on Locus. Bring her or her cortical stack back, and continue the search.

We went off to meet at some meta-bar thing, everyone doing background research on the TITAN and Yu.

Moneta

Yu sent a bunch of forks to Vischnukam station in earth orbit over the past several months.

Yu shunted to Locus about a month ago.

?? shunted to Casa Arturo about a month ago

Associates:

Traveled with Achilles and Tortoise. Non-sentient custom AIs

Morteza Bay – anarchist, hacker, reclaimer friend (recvd big favors in last 2 mos) – on Locus, hangs out at Zhu’s greenhouse, an anarchist hydroponics outfit. Until recently in a romantic liason with Anton Saul (who may have been permadeathed in the attack). He’s a member of the Variegationists, outer system reclaimers who study TITAN tech to find defenses against the TITAN tech still active on earth (e.g. the dead Iapetus Matroshka brain)

Myrmidon piece held by Viatnamese government. Lost track of in the fall.
Borrowed a spacecraft at Casa Arturo. It’s weeks overdue. Unknown where she took it. Probably still in Jovians.

Talked to Wang. Gave Achilles a robotic form with a covert ops expert system. Could follow a transhuman and stay hidden. Tortoise ghostriding. A shit-ton of security. Yu wanted to infiltrate White Khans (a nasty triad gang). There was also a suicide artist rehearsing.

Pushed a little harder, and Wang knows that there’s a TITAN connection here. The AIs are supposed to be sending data back to him. He had it set up for a fork to examine the stuff in a sandbox. If it looked like it was clear, he was supposed to reintegrate with the fork. Got a data packet and the fork was infected. Spent a month burning everything down. Tracing her without her knowledge. Got coordinates from him w/r/t Yu’s last known location. Sent a memo up the chain that he may be harboring TITAN infection.

Turns out I’ve met Bay before, but I’m not sure if it’s useful: Zhu’s greenhouse was attacked a bit ago, and everyone was slaughtered. Looks to be exsurgants. They went after Bay first, and crunched and ate his cortical stack. His body was left mutilated and impaled. Now he’s in hiding.

Burned a favor to meet him; he wanted to meet him in Simulspace and I convinced him to meet in person at Burning Eye [anti-TITAN armory].

Tara comes in like a whirlwind, wants some help with a thing. Needs to crack into White Khans. He says she’s crazy, but Anton vouches for her. Bay’s beta fork went with her when she went to break into White Khan headquarters, and they got some video back [ video transmitted ]. The attack was a couple of weeks later. We got coords (it’s a drifting habitat under propulsion), and offered Bay a new identity.

Nia Zhang used to go by Sammy Lee, and is a former White Khan.

And we took a shuttle to the Barrows to find him. We found him, and he was an unmovable asshole. We threatened a little, and we were followed out of his place.

Team attempted to infiltrate into an alley; I fell over (literally). We destroyed two of their morphs and a turret, killing one of them and grabbing the stack of the other in the process.

We ran. Moreta hacked their security system and kept guards off us, but they had some stationed at the airlock. X grenaded them, I dropped the second one, and we jumped.

We need to get to Casa Arturo and then to the White Khans.

Firewall sent us down the yellow brick road — we’re off to see the Oracle. In the form of the Wizard of Oz. We talked to him and he gave us a choice of egocasting or a shuttle. We chose to go the hard way, because we don’t know what kind of equipment’s going to be available over there.

We called in about a thousand favors to prep.

What a long couple of weeks. Quick stop in Casa Arturo to get Moreta a Guardian Swarm. Then off to the White Khan hab. Found Yu’s ship with Bay’s beta as a dead morph missing his stack.

Flew off to the hab, which seems to be mostly dead. No automated systems as we approach; we’re being quiet, but still…

We got in through the drone bay airlock, popping the lock with a security tool.

There’s a Vietnamese gentleman talking to us over the intercom, inviting us to a party. Probably a party we don’t really want to go to. We’re taking a look around some equipment just inside the airlock…

And we found it! We’re pulling it out and… exsurgent nanohive. Fuck. X was caught by the swarm. We’re not going to be able to save him, but we can keep him on our side for a while. For now we’re going to tag the TITAN tech and shove it out the airlock and come back for it when twe think the swarm may have decayed.

We headed in and found two of the white monsters, and we killed them. Then five more, and we killed them. These were smarter. Then there was a room that looked organic, and had weird nanobot-infected blood, and X offered to finish it alone and blow the hab’s reactor, but Moreta wouldn’t let him.

Dr Trace and I ran for it, so that the tech can be recovered or destroyed. Moreta made it back! And then the whole hab blow.